Global ‘Ecological Board of Directors’ Envisioned by State Department’s Climate Czar
(CNSNews.com) – Todd Stern, now the State Department’s special envoy for climate change, once pushed for the creation of an annual “E8” summit to address environmental issues. Stern represents the United States in international environmental negotiations, including the upcoming United Nations Conference on Climate Change taking place in Copenhagen in December.

Study Shows Sharp Increase in TV Ads Soliciting Plaintiffs for Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
(CNSNews.com) – Democrats demanding health-care reform are not saying much about medical malpractice lawsuits. But a new study indicates that tort reform should be included in any meaningful health care overhaul. The study — conducted for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform – says television advertisements soliciting plaintiffs for medical malpractice lawsuits increased nearly 1,400 percent in four years.

Controversy Surrounds Frontrunner in Race to Head Major U.N. Agency
(CNSNews.com) – A major United Nations agency will choose a new director-general in the coming days, and although promoting freedom of expression is among UNESCO’s key functions, the leading candidate is backed by some of the world’s most repressive governments. Farouk Hosni, who has been Egypt’s culture minister for more than two decades, has made provocative comments about the Israel.

Defiant Over Nuclear Issue, Iran Wins Sanctions-Busting Pledge From Chavez
(CNSNews.com) – As the first of a series of crucial meetings on nuclear issues began Monday, Iran’s government reiterated its defiance of the international community, saying that as far as it was concerned, the question was settled. “We will never negotiate Iran’s undeniable rights,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters.

Yale under fire for removal of Muslim cartoons
Yale University has removed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from an upcoming book about how they caused outrage across the Muslim world, drawing criticism from prominent alumni and a national group of university professors. VOTE IN A RELATED POLL

Hoyer: Media ‘Misrepresented’ Town Hall Protests
(CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says the national news media, particularly television networks, “misrepresented” the extent of opposition to health care reform voiced at various town hall meeting in August. By focusing on the rowdy few, the television cameras prevented the public from seeing the majority of people who are either open to reform or support health care reform, Hoyer said.

Many of Obama’s Claims about Health-Care Reform Have Been Debunked
(CNSNews.com) – While President Obama tells a joint session of Congress what he wants and is willing to accept in a health care reform bill Wednesday night, he may also repeat some of the points he has made over the past few months that have been refuted by non-partisan sources. The president, for example, has said health-care reform will be deficit neutral and will not steer tax dollars to abortions. He also says there are 46 million uninsured Americans. But each of these claims has been disputed by non-partisan sources.

U.S. Government Paid 15-Year-Olds to Answer Graphic Questions About Their Sex Lives
(CNSNews.com) – From March 2002 to March 2003, the federal government paid more than a thousand 15- to 17-year-olds $40 each to answer questions about their sex lives, including intimate questions about specific sexual acts, whether they had ever engaged in homosexual acts, whether they had used contraception, and what sorts of discussions they had had with their parents about sex.

Lieberman: U.S. Needs to Be Prepared for Biological Attack
Washington (CNSNews.com) – Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says the U.S. is in no better position today than it was in December 2008, when a government commission warned that Americans were not safe from an attack with biological weapons — and that a terrorist attack involving a WMD was likely to occur somewhere in the world by 2013.

Test-Ban Treaty Advocates See ‘Window of Opportunity’ Opened by Obama
(CNSNews.com) – Proponents of a global ban on nuclear weapons testing are optimistic that President Obama’s support for ratifying the pact will encourage other holdouts to follow suit, speeding up its entry into force. But the prospect of a U.S. shift is causing unease in India, and there is no sign that either Iran or North Korea is willing to embrace the test-ban agreement.

Dems’ healthcare ‘compromises’ mislead public
A healthcare policy expert says both the “trigger” and non-profit cooperative proposals being pushed by Democrats resemble the “camel’s nose under the tent” of government-run healthcare. POLL: What advice would YOU give Congress? VOTE

Obama Won’t Give Federal Insurance Benefits to Illegal Aliens; He’ll Make Them Legal First
(CNSNews.com) – In his speech to a joint session of Congress last night, President Obama said that his health care reform plan will not insure “illegal immigrants.” It is true that both the House and Senate health care bills as they are now drafted would make illegal aliens ineligible for federally funded health care. But President Obama has stated as recently as last month at a press conference in Mexico that he will seek “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation that will put illegal aliens on a “pathway to citizenship.”

Democrats’ Health Care Bills Do Not Require Citizenship Verification
(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Joe Wilson’s shout-out Wednesday night came in response to President Obama’s claim that illegal immigrants would not be covered by the Democrats’ health care plan. “You lie!” Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled. Republicans, in a post-speech “fact-check,” suggested that Obama is making a promise the legislation does not keep.

Health Experts Call Obesity A Threat to National Security
(CNSNews.com) – Health care experts, including two former U.S. surgeons general, said on Wednesday said that obesity has reached epidemic proportions and is a threat to security in the United States and abroad. It also affects the future of health care, said Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general in the Bush administration.

Congressional Report Questions Legality of GM and Chrysler Bailouts
(CNSNews.com) – A report issued by the Congressional Oversight Panel tasked with overseeing the implementation of the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) questions whether the Bush and Obama administrations had the legal authority to use TARP funds to bail out General Motors and Chrysler. The report, issued Wednesday, confirmed what CNSNews.com had previously reported: that the law which created TARP–the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act–did not grant the government specific authority to use taxpayers’ funds to rescue the auto industry.

Organizers Predict Thousands of Tea Party Activists Will Attend Saturday’s March on Washington
(CNSNews.com) – Thousands of angry taxpayers are expected to come to the nation’s capital on Saturday, Sept. 12, to march on the National Mall. These are many of the same Americans who staged “tea parties” this Spring to protest the $700 billion mortgage bailout and passage of the $787 billion economic stimulus bill — and the same people who turned out in droves over the August congressional break at town hall meetings around the country to express their outrage over a proposed trillion dollar health-care “reform.”

Deepening Venezuela-Iran Alliance Stokes Concern
(CNSNews.com) – The United States watches closely and follows links between Iran and Venezuela “very seriously,” the State Department said in response to fresh claims of a deepening collaboration between the two governments hostile to the U.S. Spokesman Ian Kelly said allegations made by veteran Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau this week – that Iran and Venezuela were “creating a cozy financial, political, and military partnership” — were serious and would be looked into.

U.S. Envoy Warns Iran Is Almost Capable of Building Atomic Bomb
(CNSNews.com) – With a deadline to cooperate or face tougher sanctions fast approaching, Iran has presented a new “proposal” relating to its nuclear program to a group of leading governments. Iran’s response came on the same day that a U.S. envoy told the United Nations nuclear watchdog that Iran was nearing “breakout” capability – the point at which it could, if it took the decision to do so, build an atomic bomb.

Eight Years After Terror Attacks, Threat Remains Real and Evolving
(CNSNews.com) – Despite counter-terrorism successes and the absence of a major and dramatic attack in the West, the security threat posed by radical Islamists remains real and dynamic, as al-Qaeda mutates into an increasingly unstructured but no less dangerous entity, according to experts monitoring the organization.

Support for Suicide Bombings and Bin Laden Still High Among Some Muslims
(CNSNews.com) – A new survey gauging Muslim attitudes indicates that backing for suicide bombings against civilians, while generally down from earlier years, remains significant in some Islamic countries – challenging the assertion that Muslims supporting terrorism constitute a “tiny minority.”

Pro-Life Congressmen and Planned Parenthood Agree: Health Care Bill Funds Abortion
(CNSNews.com) – In his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, President Barack Obama said the health care plan he is pushing will not provide federal money for abortions. But pro-life congressmen and Planned Parenthood agree that abortion would be covered under the plan under an amendment sponsored by Rep. Lois Capps (D.-Calif.).

Pelosi: We’ll ‘Squeeze’ Medicare to Pay for Health Care Bill
(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said today that Congress will pay for half of the $1 trillion health care reform bill that President Obama wants enacted by “squeezing” Medicare and Medicaid to wring out what she called “waste, fraud, abuse, redundancy, obsolescence and whatever it is.”

Conservative Pollster Defends CNN Poll on Audience Perception of Obama’s Speech
(CNSNews.com) – Conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway Thursday defended the integrity of CNN’s Wednesday night poll of those who watched President Obama’s speech to Congress on health-care reform. On Thursday, some conservatives in Washington were buzzing about the poll’s sample – and questioning whether it might have been partisan or slanted, since only 18 percent of respondents “identified themselves as Republicans.”

Obama speech ‘a litany of lies’
The Media Research Center is demanding that the media reports President Obama’s “lies, distortions, and exaggerations” delivered in his speech on healthcare reform Wednesday night.

Yale ripped for kowtowing to Islamic extremism
Gary Bauer and John Bolton both agree with recent criticism of Yale University for publishing a book about how cartoons of the prophet Muhammad caused outrage across the Muslim world — without including the actual cartoons themselves.

ObamaCare circumvents confession of abortion funding
Three pro-life leaders are voicing concern over President Obama’s healthcare plan. They believe President Obama may not be telling the truth about taxpayer-funded abortion as it pertains to his healthcare reform plan.